Law AND Orderincludinglaw AND government

The Christian Party believes that law enforcement in the United Kingdom should serve and protect the public, commanding and earning the respect of the communities they serve.

We support inclusive, community-focused, approachable policing, with a move towards community policing, building relationships instead of exacerbating tensions and succumbing to the concept of ‘no go’ areas. Special attention should be addressed to creating an atmosphere of safety around residential property. We recognise the difference between rural and urban policing and note that one result of unifying the police forces of Scotland wa(s police carrying guns on the streets of Inverness. We believe in local discretion to allow the contextual application of law and policy to the local culture.

Over-Regulation

We believe that there is over-regulation of civil and criminal law.Police can be demoralised by an ineffective prosecution service. The judicial system is being overloaded with new thought crimes created by the human rights and equalities legislation, creating ill-will and resentment against ‘the system’. Police questioning of parents for having obese children or street preachers for exercising free speech is a waste of police time and tax-payers’ money. We are in danger of reactionary legislation and policing because the milk of human kindness is being eroded by the lack of Christian grace in social relationships and our education system. The Christian Party will streamline criminal law so that the judicial system has the time and resources for dealing with real crime, with Christian wisdom and justice mingled with mercy..

EQUALITIES LAW

Positive discrimination introduced partiality into the legislative process by creating special interest groups that do not merit positive discrimination. This has had detrimental effects upon our justice system. It has exacerbated the fragmentation of society and it has run its course. It is time to re-balance the law so that there is impartial justice for all.

Positive discrimination in equality legislation is a contradiction in terms and has led to the criminalising of Christians who refuse in conscience to accept some parts of it. Discrimination used to be a sign of personal and professional maturity, and the inability to discriminate good loans from bad loans led to the banking crisis, and more examples could be supplied. Now Christians are refused the right to discriminate with whom they will do business, but equalities legislation requires them to do business with all equally. This is a recipe for chaos; international relationships do not operate on such a basis. Equality under the law is not the same as equality in one’s business dealings; the latter requires discernment and discrimination, a personal skill that cannot be legislated.

The victim mentality within the equality agenda is encouraging aggressive homosexuals and muslims to complain to the police that open air Gospel preaching offends them. Rather than ‘living and let live’ these people want to use the criminal law to silence views that they do not like. There is growing evidence that the prosecution service is being manipulated in this way. [1] It is bad enough that the tabloid media should destroy the domestic lives of whomsoever it choses to pick on, without have the prosecution service joining the fray.

In March 2014, Lady Hale, the Deputy President of the Supreme Court seems to agree and stated . 'It is fascinating that a country with an established Church can be less respectful of religious feelings than one without’. This was the court that ruled against the Bulls vs Preddy case in which the Bulls were sued and lost in court for refusing to allow two homosexual men to sleep in a double bed. She ordered all the court costs of about £40k to be refunded to the Bulls in light of her re-think.Equalities legislation stands guilty of constructive dismissal. By changing the law, Christians are being forced out of the employment for which they trained. Instead of law being applied prospectively, it is being applied retrospectively in line with European legal thinking. It is contributing to Christians being unable to take on many public service jobs, at the very time that the government is calling for skilled immigrants to enter the country.

The Christian Party calls for a review of the legal threats in Equality Commission letters that it will begin legal proceedings if there is no response to its letters in seven days.

Its assertions that one is guilty of discrimination on the grounds of a person’s sexuality is challenged by the Christian Party as being both dogmatic and prejudicial. Christians do not make business decisions based upon a person’s sexuality but they base their decision upon their assessment of the effect of any matter upon their business. The same decision would be made if a heterosexual person would submit homosexual content. Christians form a business decision based upon their mature consideration of what they consider to be in the best interests of their business, not upon the sexuality of a client or competitor.

The Christian Party will review and repeal the inequality in Equalities legislation in order to return race equality laws, sexual orientation equality laws, gender equality laws and religious equality laws to a correct basis that all men are equal under the law. The Christian Party will oppose legislation both in the United Kingdom and in the EU that seeks to maintain or create positive discrimination in favour of special interest groups that do not merit it.

The Christian Party welcomes the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly vote to support Christians to observe their faith at the workplace and in the education of their children. The resolution called, “Tackling intolerance and discrimination in Europe with a special focus on Christians” (Doc. 13660), authored by Moldovan, Valeriu Ghiletchi, was

equal access to justice

Equality under the law and equal access to justice are fundamentals principle of UK democracy, yet over-regulation has reduced the ability to have equal access to justice. Justice needs to be seen to be done, but family disputes where one party has access to legal aid and the other does not has the appearance of bias and injustice.

The Christian Party will address this grievance as a priority.

Charity law is over-regulated

The Christian Party acknowledges the importance of the Third Sector in relation to the wellbeing of our own nation and other nations. Therefore we support all endeavours to relieve and prevent poverty, to advance health and the preservation life, to further education, spirituality, citizenship and community development.

2011 Charities Act (England AND Wales)

We recall the role of the Christian church in developing charities and free education and in securing our civil and religious liberties, and we believe that our nation’s Christian heritage is the best context to continue to promote freedom for all, social benefit for the needy and public benefit for all. While acknowledging that other faith groups have their own religion, yet we expect the Charity Commissions in the UK to recognise that it is Christianity that has developed these features in our society and to uphold this as both the cultural and constitutional norm in the UK.

As churches may be the first point of contact for people with needs for care and support, local authorities should develop research into and measurement of the local impact of the Christian community, and audit the local Christian-based input, which has been measured in some American cities to be of vast extent. It ought to be measured as well as acknowledged.

Although Christianity has great public benefit, equality legislation imposes a state-based religious test upon churches that can result in their failing to retain charitable status and even interfere with their very function. The Christian Party will campaign against this state interference and discrimination.

Charitable status prevents many organisations from supporting non-charitable causes that have the same basic aim as the charity. This can lead to the multiplication to similar charities, which makes it difficult for local authorities to engage with them all. We will review the extent of this prohibition to find a more sensible solution.

The abuse of charitable status to create quasi-businesses, the necessity for employers’ liability insurance for volunteers performing such simple tasks as handing out praise books and other tasks associated with public meetings, has resulted in over-regulation of bona fide charities. Instead of charitable donations going to solicitors, accountants and insurance companies, we will review the self-perpetuating role of the Charity Commissions in proposing ever increasing regulations, with the aim of reducing the over-regulation of small charities and their inability to support issues that are germane to their cause.

Law AND Government

The Christian Party believes that traditional freedoms are being lost by parliamentary redefining of the fundamental laws of nature.

The Pilgrim Fathers left British shores in 1620 to find the Christian freedom they sought in America. In 2015, the Christian Party is calling for the right to live as Christians in the United Kingdom.

Matters have reached this sorry pass because we are being legislated out of our blood-bought rights by a concerted international secular movement using the levers of power to criminalise Christian thought.

Christians deal with inappropriate language and thought under the concept of sin, and they do not criminalise it. In the absence sin, something needs to fill the gap. Step forward political correctness. Political correctness uses the power and resources of the legal process of a country, an institution, a business, a political party, etc., to control thinking, speech and behaviour. Christianity uses the power of word and reason to win its arguments in public life, whereas the proponents of political correctness use the power of the state and the legal process to fine and criminalise people as their scare tactic to force people into submission. They create a law by parliamentary process and then use the legal process to cower the public into submission by fines or imprisonment.

Political correctness creates hate and thought crime, which is interfering with our traditional freedoms. Unlike divine law, secular sin keeps moving the goalposts as new behaviours are included. Soon it will be criminal to speak against homosexual behaviour, and as the goalposts move, more and more thought, speech and behaviour will be criminalised with detrimental consequences to one’s employment, security, peace of mind and social cohesion.

We have great concern about the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government’s forcing through the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013, which became secular law on 3rd June 2014, when throughout history, and in virtually all human societies, marriage has been the union of a man and a woman.

Fundamental laws are being overlaid by pseudolaw, which will prove very costly to the whole of public life, in financial and social terms.

Having abandoned God’s law, Britain now has different administrations of law competing with each other - Westminster, Brussels, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies. Britain’s unequal ‘Equalities legislation’ effectively asserts “some animals are more equal than others”, with Christianity near the bottom of the pecking order. Current judicial opinion has ruled that Christian conscientious objection is lower down the pecking order than homosexual rights.

We welcome, as a step in the right direction, the overwhelming vote 67 to 2 in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe against discrimination of Christians, based on a report authored by Valeriu Ghiletchi, "Tackling intolerance and discrimination in Europe with a special focus on Christians" (Doc. 13660).

Freedom of Speech

Freedom of speech was bought with the blood of civil strife. Our religious and civil liberties were dearly bought, and if they are lost and sold out by a stroke of the pen of Parliamentarians, there is every risk of such civil strife arising again. We will not allow the nation to forget the religious and civil struggle that secured our religious and civil liberties. It is easier to retain what we have than to regain it when it is lost.

The Christian Party is calling for the right to live as Christians in 21st century Britain.

Christians have learned to suffer abuse and offence. The inability of the current secular society to live with offence is another symptom of the lack of Christian tolerance.

The homosexual and atheist lobby wants to close down debate by criminalising opposition to their opinions, in order to lock in the gains that they have made in recent decades. Rather, the Christian Party supports the idea: “For the avoidance of doubt, the discussion or criticism of sexual conduct or practices or the urging of persons to refrain from or modify such conduct or practices shall not be taken of itself to be threatening or intended to stir up hatred.” [The Waddington Amendment to The Public Order Act 1986 - Section 29JA ].

These words give protection to those who wish to freely discuss homosexuality and its practices, speaking the truth in love. Those who seek to muzzle free speech are usually not content if they succeed in so doing. Their aim is to extinguish opposing thought. The Christian Party opposes the erosion of the hard-fought right to free speech, the introduction of the policing of thoughts and the de facto introduction of ‘thought crime’. The Christian Party will also oppose all government measures to silence Gospel preaching both within and outwith the church and will expose the inappropriate interference of the law in trying to do so. The public may legitimately challenge preachers, but preaching is not a criminal matter, and calling for police involvement is a waste of police time. Healthy debate is a part of Christian society and its suppression betrays the insecurity and fears of a secular society.

COmmunity Law and Regulation

The Christian Party distinguishes between community order and the state imposition of order. A community has an interest in the wellbeing and good order of its youth, but the current legislation to have state parents with similar rights to biological parents is a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Many families do not need state parents, and this legislation effectively distrusts them. The Christian Party has more trust in parents than the secular state has, making us wonder if there is a communistic agenda at work seeking to undermine the nuclear family.

We acknowledge the failure of parenting in our secular society, and are grateful for the many Christian initiatives to fill the gap, but we need to discriminate between failing families and the vast majority of stable families in order to identify where to put our time and resources. State parenting will create yet another layer of bureaucracy with its attendants costs in financial, social and domestic terms. This surveillance of parents will create fear and distrust in the heart of our communities.

The entire community has a responsibility towards raising the next generation. Formerly one could expect neighbours to look out for the wellbeing of one’s home, car, and even children if need be. This is a more cost effective manner to police communities. However, today such neighbourly concern and intervention when necessary is fraught with the dangers of misunderstanding, mistrust and even physical harm. There was a time when a neighbour could correct an errant youngster not only with impunity but with the thanks of their parents. Today, ‘getting involved’ is too risky, on too many levels. Reporting a child to his or her parent can no longer be guaranteed to be greeted with gratitude. As a result, neighbours are unknown to each other, often literally living behind bars, so that society has been fragmented with many people living in fear behind their own doors.

It is far harder to hurt or steal from someone one has come to know, and Christian Party's educational and social policy will promote community cohesion at local authority and community level. We will encourage, celebrate and support community volunteers, and we will review the over-regulation of the voluntary sector in a similar manner to the charity sector.

The Christian Party policy will engender greater civic pride and ownership of our streets as well as the home. We will replace the dependency culture with a sense of civic responsibility to identify and promote required local initiatives. We will promote local democracy so that those who pay for the service will prioritize the spending. Lower level councils should have adequate representation in higher level councils to ensure their voice is heard.

The Christian Party will support community safety and grassroots initiatives such as the Street Pastors [1] , promoting a community spirit that cares for and looks out for the wellbeing of one’s neighbours. In terms of law and order, local offenders should repay their community with community service such as litter picking, graffiti removal, and landscape gardening on housing estate or in appropriate public spaces, incorporating skill development for those who engage with offenders’ rehabilitation. In this way the importance of cleanliness and civic pride will be engendered not only in offenders, but in the whole community. [2]

Community AND Town Councils

The Christian Party recognises the contribution that town and community councillors make to their local area and will encourage the re-establishment of councils where the people are not represented at local level. The National Association of Local Councils states that 65% of England and Wales are not represented by local or parish councils. In Scotland, many areas have no community councils because volunteers feel that officials do not respect the views of volunteers, although they may represent considerable expertise.

With local authority budget cuts, the responsibility for managing town and community assets are reverting to local councils. Community councils need to be re-established in tandem, with restoration of appropriate assets following the 1974 asset stripping which led to their demise. Not only will their re-establishment ease budget pressures on local authorities, but it supports decentralisation and encourages volunteer work across the country, promoting local ownership and control over decisions that affect their locality.

Closed Circuit Television (CCTV)

The Christian Party believes that surveillance in known criminal areas is appropriate but a better system needs to be in place so that the public can have confidence that we are not developing a Big Brother society. CCTV records crime and may have a role in reducing crime, but it does not stop crime when criminals factor it into their plans. A cheaper and more effective system is to promote Christian education that God observes all our actions all the time and we must give account to Him. For example, if our schools taught Christ’s warning against killing in the name of God, the home-grown muslim threat would be minimised by their acquaintance with the teaching of a prophet that muslims respect.

The Christian Party is concerned that CCT is being used inappropriately for increasing revenues from traffic offences. The Christian Party is against over-surveillance and the use of speed cameras for entrapment, but we are in favour of surveillance to protect the safety of pedestrians, children and other road users. The right to challenge the infallibility of electronic equipment has been denied in court procedure, and the Christian Party will reinstate it.

Communications Data Bill: the Home Secretary, Teresa May, thinks surveillance is not the problem but the ungovernable internet.

Family COurts

The Christian Party is very concerned about the secrecy and proceedings of Family Courts in England and Wales, which are destructive of family life. Several media programmes and the BBC have raised similar concerns. The Christian Party disagrees with the cruel sentence of forcibly removing a child from its biological mother.

On 23/6/2014 the BBC drew attention to 22,790 children taken away from 7143 mothers in England and Wales over the past seven years by Family Courts. Taking away their children simply leads to some of them having more children, and in one example the Family Court has taken away 14 children from the same mother. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-27943591

The Christian Party still believes in habeus corpus and in being innocent until proven guilty. We thoroughly disagree with the unchristian European principle of corpus juris in which the defendant must prove their innocence. The resources of the state always outweigh the accused, and corpus juris is contrary to natural justice.

Parents and State Guardians

The Christian Party supports the No to the Named Person campaign (NO2NP) against the SNP Scottish Government’s support of ‘state guardians’. This is a sledgehammer to crack a nut, interferes with parental rights, is an unwarranted Big Brother intrusion into family life, fails to use one’s God-given discernment to identify those families at risk and creates a new layer of bureaucracy that detracts from the targeted resources that are needed to address failed parenting and vulnerable persons.

slavery, Sex Slavery and forced labour

Prostitution abuses and enslaves all those engaged in it, and women in particular. It is suspected that there are more slaves in Britain today than at the height of the African slave trade - and mainly as sex slaves. The Christian Party seeks the most stringent action to eradicate sex slavery in the United Kingdom and to secure heavy penalties for slave drivers.According to the International Labour Organisation, nearly 21 million men, women and children around the world are in slavery. Human trafficking, slavery, forced labour and domestic servitude are all forms of modern slavery. Many people are trafficked into the United Kingdom and about 25 per cent of slaves currently found in the UK are children. There is limited data on the number of children affected but it is estimated that a minimum of 10 children per week are brought into the UK, destined for domestic work or sexual exploitation.

There has been too much government delay in addressing the concerns of the past, and the present vigour to redress the corruptions of the 1980s, such as paedophilia in high places, should be reflected in robust and swift enquiry to expose the immorality of the child sex trade which is even more serious and more relevant to today’s suffering children.We welcome the Modern Slavery Bill and urge the government to address this matter with urgency, giving priority to children under 16 years old.

Restorative justice

The Christian Party supports the concept of restorative justice. We believe significant financial penalties on convicted criminals should properly compensate victims of their crime, reimburse damage to property, and pay back to the community with appropriate community orders. Our education policy will instill a Christian social conscience in prisoner reform programmes and promote it in our schools.

Zero Tolerance on Drug abuse

The Christian Party supports zero tolerance towards illegal drug possession for personal use. Any business, including the illegal drugs trade, relies on demand to survive. The current supply-sided approach that focuses only on drug dealers will not solve the problem if the demand side of the illegal drugs trade is not simultaneously tackled in a robust way. We disagree with the policy of non-arrest for possession for personal use, and will replace it with on the spot fines to reduce bureaucracy while maintaining standards of behaviour. Driving under the influence of drugs can be more dangerous than alcohol and requires a severe penalty. The Christian Party supports a full range of alternative punishments to complement prison sentences with Christian rehabilitation programmes for more serious offenders.

The Use of Bailiffs and Sheriff’s Officers by Local Authorities

The use of bailiffs and sheriff’s officers by national and local authorities as the principal method of collection of unpaid, fixed penalty notice parking fines, and for the recovery of unpaid tax and rent, has got out of hand. Whilst it is recognised that such revenue must be collected, the use of legal personnel as the first face to face engagement is oppressive, unnecessary, expensive and counter-productive in the long term. The distress caused by a bailiff visit can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, bringing about business collapse, family breakdown and resentment towards the national and local administrative bodies responsible.The Christian Party believes that a visit from a council officer or government representative, rather than a legal representative, in order to seek an orderly resolution to any financial indebtedness will produce better results both in terms of repayment of funds and good community relations. The Christian Party will work towards this end and encourage debt management agencies.

Motoring Law

The Christian Party believes that the ‘one size fits all’ approach to national speed limits is inappropriate and out of date. We recommend variable speed limits, which would add very little to the large number of road signs already used. This would allow accident black spots to be highlighted and permit a faster flow of traffic in other places. It is inappropriate that a series of signposts should be erected for a sharp bend but not a single sign for a speed limit, and we will support a national debate on this. Meanwhile, new trunk roads should be built to a specification that could accommodate speeds higher than 70 mph.The Highway Code recommends drivers to be able to stop in the distance that they see to be clear. If a road is clear of other road users (including pedestrians and other moving hazards) we believe that it is sensible to allow a driver to use their judgment to increase their speed to this limit, and the current speed limit becomes relevant only when there are other road users.Traffic policing is important for detecting the movement of drugs around the country, and driving under the influence of drugs, and texting while driving are more dangerous activities than drink driving. Texting, mobile phones, drugs and alcohol all compromise road safety. The Christian Party will support road safety education through national television instead of the commonplace ‘police chase entertainment’ programmes which demonstrate that criminals are being watched but which teach very little about safe driving.Speeding fines can appear to be a source of revenue collection and introduce unnecessary conflict with the police and the justice system. Dangerous driving and the failure to maintain﻿ a safe distance are more relevant and more appropriate offences for policing. Furthermore, speeding offences can result in court appearances where the motorist’s entire financial status must be made available to the court. Such intrusion is unnecessary and unjustified. The disclosure of one’s financial status without good cause should cease.

﻿Christian Party Members of Parliament will:﻿

Change the role of Social Services to support parental authority rather than weaken it.

Make contraception for minors, without parental approval, illegal.

Re-instate in loco parentis as a cardinal principle of school teaching.

Clarify and correct the anti-smacking law to shift the balance of power in the home from children back to parents.

Ensure that the burden of proof when a parent is accused of abusing their child is high, but the penalty for conviction is severe.

Clarify and correct legislation to establish the right of parents and families to protect their homes from criminals.

Promote initiatives to foster civic pride and community ownership of our streets, and review 'Health and Safety’ objections.

Promote the use of local community service penalties for local offenders.

Review the use of CCTV surveillance and promote community grassroots initiatives such as Street Pastors.

Abolish race equality laws, sexual orientation equality laws, and gender equality laws so that there are no special benefits for special interest groups, but impartial justice for all.

Resist all attempts to move the homosexual agenda beyond tolerance to the promotion of homosexual practice.